


Eighth Christmas

by tatooedlaura



Series: Christmas [9]
Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 20:43:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9921413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatooedlaura/pseuds/tatooedlaura
Summary: Just Scully and Will ...





	

Scully spent Christmas Eve at Maggie’s surrounded by loud family, mounds of presents, her mother’s recently acquired goldfish and what felt like a gigantic hole where her heart should have been. William enjoyed his Merry-Go-Round ride from relative to relative, drooling, patting, sitting up and pulling hair whenever possible. She, on the other hand, spent her time staring into space, remembering the two Christmases that Mulder spent with her family, sitting behind her on the floor, hand gently resting a hair’s width from her thigh, shin folded against her back end as he shuffled up close, watching the festivities over her shoulder, his breath so close to her, so warm and soft on her neck.

Suddenly, a restlessness shook her, a need to move, a need to see him, a need to hold him so strong she had to stand, pacing back and forth to the confusion of her mother, who watched her quietly from the couch. Her circle took her from the living room to the kitchen, down the hall, past the bathroom and stairs, soon returning to the living room. She traced the path four times before she found Maggie standing in her way in the darkened hall.

“Honey, are you all right?”

Rooted there, hands playing with themselves, wringing absently, “I need to go home, Mom. I just … something … I need to go. I’m sorry. I know it’s not that late but if you won’t hate me, I’m going to get going.”

She didn’t want to see them go but something in Dana’s tone of voice drove her to nod her head, “of course. Just tell everyone Will kept you up late last night and you both need your rest.”

Crooking an eyebrow and trying to smile, “lying on Christmas Eve. God will not approve.”

“I’ll deal with the repercussions but I think it will be fine.” Giving Scully a hug, “just don’t forget to come back in the morning. I’ll have been too long away from my little Will by then.” Stepping back, Maggie gave her a soft look, “we’ll be up at 6am, like usual, Mass at 9, breakfast at 10:30, like always.”

“We’ll be here, promise.”

With a smile, “do your best.”

&&&&&&&&&&

Scully managed to get into her apartment and lock the door before she stopped dead in her tracks, her senses coming on line instantly. Putting Will’s carrier gently down on the floor partially under the end table, she slipped her gun from her waist, then began scouting the apartment, not sure what was bothering her but looking thoroughly through every room, closet, behind ever door and under every bed. Once she was satisfied, she returned to the living room, retrieving Will first before her eyes finally processed what was different.

Hanging on the Christmas tree, dead center and nearly hidden by an angled branch, was an ornament that had not been there earlier in the day.

Spinning quickly on her heel, she half expected to see him standing behind her, ready to scare the bejesus out of her, kiss her, hug her, cry when he saw how big his son was becoming. Instead, she only saw an empty kitchen, cold and dark, the misery overwhelming her instantly; she’d missed him, missed him sneaking in, missed him wanting to see his little boy and her, missed him so close she could smell his soap and taste his skin.

She burst into tears.

&&&&&&&&&&

It was well after midnight before she finally began dozing, her head nodding, her ears finally relaxing to every sound made within the apartment. She was just slipping into a half-formed dream of Mulder when she felt a pair of ice cold lips on her own. Eyes flying open, Scully saw him, so real and so very close that the first thing she did was swing, heavy-fisted, catching him squarely at the top of his cheekbone, sliding her knuckles across his closed eye and ramming into his nose. After a millisecond of hesitated confusion, she was crouching over his hunched form, Mulder holding his face and groaning.

Yanking his hands away, she twisted his head towards her and kissed him, amazed he was real and whole and in front of her when she missed him the most.

He kissed her back for a few moments, then pulled away, whispering, “what the hell was that!?”

She met his mouth again and he stopped asking questions, too busy running his hands over her, pulling her tightly against him, to worry about a bruised cheekbone and burning eye. He only separated enough to pull the sweater over her head, making a note to comment on it eventually, once he remembered how to say more than a moaned ‘I love you’ in the general vicinity of her bare breasts, smooth thighs, curved ass and valleyed back.

&&&&&&&&&&&&

The fear, however, set in the moment the pooled sweat between them began to evaporate. He felt her muscles tense, coiling in preparation to defend him, to kill him, to throw him from her house in fear for their son’s life.

His hands came down on her upper arms, his leg holding her knees, voice almost inaudibly, “don’t do this yet … please?”

She beat him to the punch, sliding sideways from his grasp and off the bed, shivering suddenly in the cold darkness, “do what? Wonder if somebody’s going to break in here and kill you? Shoot you in my bed?”

Mulder shushed her as he sat up, pulling the sheets around his shoulders, “yell any louder you’re going to wake up Will.”

“What the hell are you doing here, Mulder? You’re supposed to be hiding somewhere, far, far away from the eight thousand people who have you at the top of their shit list.”

Seeing this might not go as smoothly as he’d hoped, he sat up, pushing aside sheets, reaching out to wrap his fingers around her hip to pull her closer, “I couldn’t stay away. Not on Christmas. The guys have been dropping hints that I’m somewhere in southern Florida and the surveillance team that had eyes on you tonight gave up and went home to their families or their bottles of whiskey or their mothers, I have no idea, but Byers gave me the all clear to come in and I did and you belted me.”

Stomach clenching, “there’s a team on me?”

“Yeah. Skinner’s guys so not too terrible but I couldn’t have anyone, not even Walter, know I’m here so I had to wait until they left.”

By now, she was trapped between knobby knees, thigh muscles giving under the pressure of his hold on her, “then where did the ornament come from?”

Not smiling, wishing with all his heart he’d been the one to hang it, “I gave it to Frohike to hang for me in case I didn’t make it inside.”

She kissed him again with a fierceness fueled by six-month separation, her lips hovering over his when she finally pulled back to catch her breath, “do you want to see Will?”

His arms tightened around her, a spasmodic jerk of nervous anxiety, “yes, please.”

After pulling on pajamas, she retrieved their son, climbing carefully into bed before laying him between them. Mulder settled beside him immediately, head against the mattress alongside the boy’s, staring in wonder at his perfect nose, curved chin and pursed lips, “God, Scully, how can I ever leave him again?”

“You don’t have to.”

Allowing Will to blur slightly as he focused on Scully over his head, “please don’t make this harder. I have a few more hours then,” tears ran rivers down his cheeks at this point but she made no move to clear them, “God, don’t fight with me now, okay? I can’t handle it.”

Heart breaking, she cried with him, watching him smooth his fingers over light eyebrows and reddening hair, button nose and chin cleft, apple-round cheeks and near-translucent eyelids. Quiet tears fell on small pajamas and Scully held her boys as close as possible while they snuggled on the rumpled bed, breathed lullabies sung to sleeping ears. Mulder lived, for a brief moment, the mundane, homebound existence he wished for and dreamed of every hour he was awake and every moment he slept.

Eventually, exhaustion drove her to sleep but Mulder remained alert, basking in the precious time he was part of a family again.

His family.

His tiny, bigger than the world family.

&&&&&&&&&&&

He stayed until just before dawn, holding his boy close for the last hour, cradling him to his chest, memorizing his smell, his fingers and toes, his hummingbird heartbeat and the sounds he made, from cooing to grunting to that soul-melting sigh that made Mulder shut his eyes, try to absorb the perfection that was his son.

&&&&&&&&&&&

Scully woke to an empty bed, Will gone but making noise on the baby monitor, demanding breakfast and a clean diaper. The depression settled in quickly, the cold, heaviness of the apartment telling her he was already gone.

Moving automatically to Will’s room, she found a note hanging from the crib, taped and innocently waiting to be read. Forcing herself to wait until she’d changed Will and fed him, she finally settled him on her hip before unfolding the paper.

An hour later, she forced herself to get both of them ready for the return trip to Grandma’s house, Scully finally giving up halfway through, moving to the tree to examine yet again the ornament he’d left behind: one of a little boy in an oversize Yankee jersey, cap askew, glove at his feet, bat too large to hold up off the ground with the words ‘Daddy’s Little Home Run Hitter’ written underneath.

On the opposite side, Mulder had carefully printed in his trademark Sharpie “I love you” and the year.


End file.
